Key messages

Social protection is delivery infrastructure for climate action.

Social protection (SP) systems already reach 52% of the global population (ILO 2024) and have demonstrated capacity to scale at speed. Harnessing this delivery infrastructure for climate adaptation, loss and damage response, and just transition is essential, not a marginal consideration.

The finance architecture is opening—but social protection is not yet inside it.

Only 13% of second-generation Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) referenced social protection (USP2030 Working Group 2024); third-generation NDCs in the current 2025 cycle show early improvement, but most still leave SP outside their core climate strategy (Walsham 2025). The Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), the Global Environment Facility's ninth replenishment (GEF-9), the Climate Investment Funds' (CIF) ARISE programme, the Adaptation Fund (AF), and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) all present near-term entry points—but each requires deliberate positioning by SP actors to access them.

The evidence base is maturing but unevenly distributed.

Strong evidence: natural resource management and ecosystem restoration via public works; anticipatory cash transfers for loss reduction. Thinner evidence: livelihood diversification and climate-adaptive agricultural practice adoption, both highly contextually contingent.

Systems thinking, not programme stacking, is what works.

Social protection programmes do not automatically produce climate outcomes. They require deliberate co-design with disaster risk reduction, agricultural extension, early warning systems, and livelihood programming to build specific adaptive capacity rather than generic resilience.

Two systems that need each other but rarely meet

Climate change is eroding the gains of SP. Climate change is estimated to push a further 32–132 million people into poverty by 2030 (Jafino et al. 2020), disproportionately affecting those most dependent on natural resources, agriculture, and coastal livelihoods. An estimated 52% of people in sub-Saharan Africa and 42% in South Asia are employed in climate-sensitive agricultural sectors (Bhalla et al. 2024). SP systems cannot achieve their core poverty-reduction mandate without engaging with these structural climate risks.

At the same time, climate action needs SP. Mitigation measures—fossil fuel subsidy reform, reforestation, ecosystem restoration, transitions to green energy—impose costs that fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations. Without SP, climate policies face a political economy problem: they are undeliverable without public consent, and public consent depends on people being protected from the costs of transition. Indonesia's fuel subsidy reform and Morocco's energy transition are both cases where cash transfers made politically costly reforms viable (GIZ/BMZ Task Force 2025; Inchauste and Victor 2017).

Yet the two systems have developed in institutional silos. SP ministries are rarely consulted during NDC drafting. Climate finance institutions have lacked systematic frameworks for engaging SP. Only 13% of second-generation NDCs referenced SP (USP2030 Working Group 2024); the current third-generation NDC cycle shows early improvement, but most submissions still leave SP outside their core climate strategy (Walsham 2025).

Adaptive social protection across the climate spectrum

Adaptive SP—SP that integrates disaster risk management and climate change adaptation into programme design, data, financing, and institutional arrangements (Bowen et al. 2020)—sits at the intersection of these two systems. A growing body of evidence, most comprehensively reviewed in FAO's 2024 scoping study (Bhalla et al. 2024), demonstrates that SP contributes to climate outcomes across four domains, though with important variation in evidence quality.

Adaptation and resilience-building. SP programmes reduce vulnerability and build absorptive, anticipatory, and adaptive capacity. The strongest evidence concerns shock-responsive and anticipatory mechanisms: Kenya's Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP) demonstrates that SP systems can scale before hazards hit, delivering cash to pre-identified vulnerable groups ahead of forecast events (Merttens et al. 2018). Bangladesh's anticipatory cash transfers reached flood-affected households four days before peak flooding in 2024, outperforming any reactive emergency response (GIZ/BMZ Task Force and NDC Partnership 2025). Evidence on facilitating the adoption of climate-adaptive agricultural practices is more mixed—adoption is sensitive to context, transfer value, and whether complementary services (extension, inputs, insurance) are present. In Niger, Aker and Jack (2021) tested whether cash or training was the binding constraint on adoption of demi-lunes—a rainwater harvesting technique that captures runoff to restore degraded soil. Training alone increased adoption by over 90 percentage points; conditional or unconditional cash transfers had no additional effect. Knowledge, not liquidity, was binding.

Natural resource management and ecosystem restoration. This is the domain with the strongest and most consistent evidence base. India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) demonstrates the presence of a 'double dividend': public works generate income for poor households while constructing green infrastructure. A multi-state evaluation of NREGS by Esteves et al. (2013) covering 40 villages across four districts in four Indian states documented groundwater stabilisation, soil organic carbon increases in 72% of beneficiary plots, and afforestation in 31 of 40 villages. Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) increased tree cover by 3.8% between 2005 and 2019 across 34.5 million hectares—equivalent to 1.5% of Ethiopia's annual NDC emissions reduction target (Hirvonen et al. 2022). In Southeast Asia, environmental cash-for-work programmes in the Philippines have demonstrated that fisherfolk displaced by seasonal fishing bans can be compensated while ecosystems recover—combining income security with fisheries management in a single mechanism (Bhalla et al. 2024).

Climate mitigation and just transition. Cash transfers contribute to mitigation both directly—Brazil's Bolsa Verde reduced deforestation by 22% in treated areas, with carbon dioxide benefits valued at four times programme cost between 2011 and 2015 (Wong et al. 2023)—and indirectly, by creating the political conditions for structural reform. GIZ/BMZ analysis documents 24 subsidy reform episodes across 18 countries that have used cash transfers to manage the distributional consequences of fossil fuel price increases (GIZ/BMZ Task Force 2025; Inchauste and Victor 2017). Labour market programmes and income support are increasingly recognised as essential components of credible just transition strategies: China's response to its commercial logging ban, combining unemployment protection, job placement, and cash benefits for 700,000 workers, offers a potential model (Canonge 2022).

Loss and damage. SP systems have particular advantages over ad hoc humanitarian responses in addressing loss and damage: they operate through rights-based entitlements rather than charity, reach pre-identified vulnerable populations without fresh targeting costs, and can scale through existing delivery infrastructure. Fiji's rapid cash deployment following Cyclone Winston through its existing SP system illustrates this advantage (Mansur, Doyle, and Ivaschenko 2017). Huber and Murray (2024) argue that routing loss and damage finance through national SP systems offers both efficiency and equity gains—but only for countries with sufficiently developed systems.

Summary of evidence

Key country evidence

Nicaragua Atención a Crisis: Productive investment grants combined with a conditional cash transfer (CCT) led to 13pp higher engagement in non-agricultural self-employment and 8% higher consumption two years post-programme (Macours, Premand, and Vakis 2022).

Brazil Bolsa Verde: Deforestation 22% lower in treated areas. Carbon benefits valued at USD 415 million (2011–15)—four times programme cost (Wong et al. 2023).

Indonesia—Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH): National cash transfer reduced tree cover loss by 30% in exposed rural villages between 2008 and 2012 (Ferraro and Simorangkir 2020).

Ethiopia PSNP: Public works increased tree cover by 3.8%, contributing 1.5% of Ethiopia's annual NDC emissions reduction pledge. Mitigation co-benefits could offset up to 49% of administrative costs if tree cover is maintained (Hirvonen et al. 2022).

Social protection does not automatically produce climate outcomes

Three qualifications matter for programme design and for the credibility of claims made to funders:

— Complementarity is non-negotiable. The FAO review found that the binding constraint on climate-adaptive practice adoption varies by context: sometimes liquidity, sometimes knowledge, sometimes labour or market access. Programmes that do not diagnose this constraint before design risk providing the wrong solution at real cost. Cash transfers alone rarely drive livelihood diversification without complementary productive grants, market linkages, or skills programming (Bhalla et al. 2024).

— Maladaptation is a real risk. Crop insurance access in India led some farmers toward cotton monoculture and reduced biodiversity—an outcome that increased rather than reduced underlying climate vulnerability. Ethiopia's PSNP was associated with reduced on-farm labour and lower agrobiodiversity in some settings. Environmental programmes without monitoring may incentivise quantity over quality—the case of mangrove reforestation in the Philippines showed this clearly (Bhalla et al. 2024). Cost-benefit analyses of SP for climate must account for these trade-offs, not just headline co-benefits.

— Systems integration is what generates sustained impact. Public works programmes produce better environmental outcomes when social welfare ministries have technical partners from environment, agriculture, and disaster risk reduction who can ensure appropriate project selection and seasonal timing. The institutional challenge of making this happen—across ministerial silos, in resource-constrained settings—is where most programmes fall short.

Opening access to climate finance for social protection

The global climate finance architecture is evolving rapidly, and for the first time multiple funds are explicitly opening space for SP programming—though each requires deliberate positioning.

The Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), operationalised at COP28 in 2023 and now headquartered in Bonn, opened its first call for funding requests in November 2025 with an initial envelope of USD 250 million for grants of USD 5–20 million per country (FRLD 2025). The Fund's governing frameworks recognise SP mechanisms as a priority channel. However, total estimated loss and damage needs for 2025 alone reach USD 395 billion (range: USD 128–937 billion) (Tavoni et al. 2024). Even fully capitalised at current pledge levels of USD 789 million, FRLD would not have the resources to be the primary financing vehicle.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF), the largest dedicated climate finance institution, has a growing but still fragmented engagement with social protection. Its strongest linkages to date centre on climate services and early warning systems, and a systematic SP rationale has yet to be mainstreamed across the portfolio (Aleksandrova, Kuhl, and Malerba 2024). A 2024 GCF approval of USD 23.5 million for a Mozambique project linking climate adaptation and SP through decentralised planning, explicitly aligned with the country's NDC and anchored on four specific SP measures, demonstrates that embedding SP within national climate commitments can serve as a direct lever for unlocking GCF financing (GCF 2024).

GEF-9 (with its first calls expected July 2026) has, for the first time, explicitly referenced SP in the Least Developed Countries Fund/Special Climate Change Fund (LDCF/SCCF) strategy for least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with the draft programming strategy containing a dedicated 'Adaptive Social Protection' section (GEF 2025). The CIF's ARISE programme (launching 2026) integrates adaptive SP within a dedicated climate resilience window (GIZ/BMZ Task Force 2025).

Major multilateral climate finance windows

Operating since 2010 under the Kyoto Protocol and now serving the Paris Agreement, the Adaptation Fund (AF) has committed approximately USD 1.1 billion across 165+ concrete adaptation projects to date, with over 43 million beneficiaries (Adaptation Fund 2024). AF was the first multilateral climate fund to pioneer direct access through accredited National Implementing Entities (NIEs). Its portfolio includes community-based adaptation work and pilots of SP-adjacent financial mechanisms, including parametric insurance. For SP ministries in countries with NIE accreditation (or close to it), the AF is the most operationally proven path to direct climate finance, even if its grant ticket sizes are smaller than the larger multilateral climate funds (MCFs).

For SP programmes seeking to engage these funds, the practical sequencing matters: NDC embedding creates the policy hook; national accreditation of implementing entities creates the access channel; and co-design with environmental ministries creates the technical credibility that MCF reviewers look for.

Three priorities

1. Embed adaptive SP in national climate strategies—explicitly and concretely.

NDCs and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) are the policy hook that unlocks climate finance for SP. Mozambique has shown this is possible—naming specific programmes, specific populations, and specific roles across adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage; Malawi appears to be moving along similar lines, though detailed mapping is not yet published. SP ministries cannot wait for climate ministries to arrive at this realisation; they need to engage NDC drafting processes actively, with costed proposals (USP2030 Working Group 2024).

2. Design for specific adaptive capacity, not generic resilience.

The FAO evidence review draws a critical distinction between generic adaptive capacity (income security, health, food security), which standard SP programmes build and for which the evidence is well established, and specific adaptive capacity: the uptake of climate-adaptive practices, livelihood diversification away from climate-sensitive activities, and active ecosystem management. Climate finance requires the latter. Programme design must diagnose binding constraints per context and build in complementary interventions accordingly, rather than assuming that cash transfers alone will drive climate behaviour change.

3. Build the political economy case for SP as climate delivery infrastructure.

SP actors (ministries, implementing agencies, bilateral programmes) need to make a credible case to climate finance institutions that SP systems offer cost-effective, rights-based, scalable delivery infrastructure for climate outcomes. This means investing in costed investment cases, as FAO has done for anticipatory action, generating programme-level evidence on climate co-benefits such as mitigation and avoided loss, and positioning national programmes within the frameworks that MCFs recognise: NDC targets, NAP indicators, and Global Goal on Adaptation benchmarks. The ILO's World Social Protection Report 2024–26 makes this case at the global level (ILO 2024) but translating it into national investment propositions remains substantially incomplete.

References

Adaptation Fund. 2024. Annual Performance Report for FY24. AFB/EFC.34/8. Washington, DC: Adaptation Fund Board, 9 September 2024.

Aker, J.C., and B.K. Jack. 2021. Harvesting the Rain: The Adoption of Environmental Technologies in the Sahel. NBER Working Paper 29518. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w29518

Aleksandrova, M., L. Kuhl, and D. Malerba. 2024. "Unlocking climate finance for social protection: an analysis of the Green Climate Fund." Climate Policy 24(7): 878–893. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2024.2338817

Bhalla, G., M. Knowles, G. Dahlet, and M. Poudel. 2024. Scoping review on the role of social protection in facilitating climate change adaptation and mitigation for economic inclusion among rural populations. Rome: FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd0287en

Bowen, T., C. del Ninno, C. Andrews, S. Coll-Black, U. Gentilini, K. Johnson, Y. Kawasoe, A. Kryeziu, B. Maher, and A. Williams. 2020. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks. International Development in Focus. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Canonge, J. 2022. China: Social protection and climate change. Policy Brief. Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Esteves, T., et al. 2013. "Agricultural and Livelihood Vulnerability Reduction through the MGNREGA." Economic and Political Weekly 48(52): 94–103.

Ferraro, P.J., and R. Simorangkir. 2020. "Conditional cash transfers to alleviate poverty also reduced deforestation in Indonesia." Science Advances 6(24): eaaz1298. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1298

FRLD. 2025. Call for funding requests under Barbados Implementation Modalities. Belém: COP30, 10 November 2025.

GCF. 2024. SAP042: Building climate resilience by linking climate adaptation and social protection through decentralised planning in Mozambique (LINK). Project document. Songdo: Green Climate Fund, approved 18 July 2024. https://www.greenclimate.fund/project/sap042

GEF. 2025. Draft GEF Programming Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change for the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund for the GEF-9 Period of July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2030 and Operational Improvements. GEF/LDCF.SCCF/02/SM2/01. Prepared by the GEF Secretariat for the Second Meeting on the GEF Programming Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, 10 October 2025, Kasane, Botswana.

GIZ/BMZ Task Force. 2025. Scaling social protection for climate action: Insights from and for multilateral climate funds. Bonn: Adaptation Community Network.

GIZ/BMZ Task Force and NDC Partnership. 2025. Placing people at the centre of NDCs 3.0: The power of social protection to accelerate climate action. Bonn: Adaptation Community Network / NDC Partnership.

Hirvonen, K., E.A. Machado, A.M. Simons, and V. Taraz. 2022. "More than a safety net: Ethiopia's flagship public works program increases tree cover." Global Environmental Change 75: 102549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102549

Huber, J., and Ú. Murray. 2024. "Turning climate justice into practice? Channeling loss and damage funding through national social protection systems in climate-vulnerable countries." WIREs Climate Change 15(2): e867. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.867

ILO. 2024. World Social Protection Report 2024–26: Universal social protection for climate action and a just transition. Geneva: International Labour Organization.

Inchauste, G., and D.G. Victor, eds. 2017. The Political Economy of Energy Subsidy Reform. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Jafino, B.A., B. Walsh, J. Rozenberg, and S. Hallegatte. 2020. Revised estimates of the impact of climate change on extreme poverty by 2030. Policy Research Working Paper 9417. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Macours, K., P. Premand, and R. Vakis. 2022. "Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies: Can Productive Safety Nets Help Households Manage Climatic Variability?" The Economic Journal 132(647): 2438–2470. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac018

Mansur, A., J. Doyle, and O. Ivaschenko. 2017. Social protection and humanitarian assistance nexus for disaster response: Lessons learnt from Fiji's Tropical Cyclone Winston. Social Protection & Labor Discussion Paper 1701. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Merttens, F., et al. 2018. Evaluation of the Kenya Hunger Safety Net Programme Phase 2—Impact Evaluation Final Report. Oxford: Oxford Policy Management.

Tavoni, M., et al. 2024. "Economic quantification of loss and damage funding needs." Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 5: 411–413. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00565-7

USP2030 Working Group on Social Protection and Climate Change. 2024. Integrating social protection in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Geneva: USP2030 / SPIAC-B.

Walsham, M. 2025. "How are NDCs 3.0 shaping up?" FAO Social Protection News. Rome: FAO. https://www.fao.org/social-protection/news-and-events/news/news-detail/how-are-ndcs-3.0-shaping-up/en

Wong, P.Y., K. Kuralbayeva, L.O. Anderson, A.M. Pessoa, and T. Harding. 2023. Individual Pay for Collective Performance and Deforestation: Evidence from Brazil. Working Paper 110. London: Queen Mary University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.